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The real origins of this story was actually a short story written by a different author. There is an ending to the short story version (but it's sort of weird and not really what you would have expected),

Ted's Caving Page is a more personalized version of the tale including pictures and such. The writing is just fantastic. I've never heard someone more accurately capture the feel of being in a cave with words.

Quick edit for those who are interested: The short story is called "The Fear of Darkness" by Thomas Lera. Though I think Ted's Caving Page is a MUCH better read. The cliffhanger is so much more PAINFUL and AWESOME than the real ending anyway.

I don't see anything about the video that indicates it is pretending to be real. It doesn't say "based on a true story" or anything. Do you go out to watch movies and complain that they are "pretending to be real" because they don't explicitly state that they are works of fiction?

It's presented in a documentary style. It ends with text stating that, "the North Wales Police Force has been informed of all the evidence collected," and, "the murder remains unsolved." The webpage and youtube account featured in the video actually do exist and do not indicate that they are fictional. There is even considerable confusion among our fellow commenters as to whether or not, and to what degree, this is real.

It's seems clear to me that there's some degree of deliberate blurring of the truth. It's usually a tactic to drum up controversy and word of mouth, and I find it dishonest.

The username doesn't match that which is in the video. The video displayed in the video was made before the linked account was created. There is an account that goes by the name 'Fortress' however this account has no videos and was made in 2006, the account in the video was made in 2005, and the account linked was made in 2008. The videos are on this channel but they were uploaded last year. As the channel commenters pointed out, we don't know how "fortress" uploaded a video of himself in transit to his "demise" if he was killed after making it.

The commenters have also pointed out that the shovel he is shown using is the same shovel in the pictures of Al1 burying the 9000 pounds. It is also stated that the article about the murder does not exist. The most damning bit of evidence is in the puzzle site's source code. This was explained in the second comment down from the one you linked. This is a neat story, but nothing more. Kudos to author but lets not try to go the way of stories that try to be documentaries shall we?

The above poster said, "even if it was true". That statement means that what follows is based on the assumption that it "was true". C0lMustard then says that, based on that assumption, it "would still be a re-enactment".

My reply followed the same format: Assuming it were true, the puzzle and progress videos would both exist, and likely still be on Youtube.

That was great except for the guys predictions of how the struggle went down at the end. Was he not listening to his own story? In the original tale, the guys were killed by greed. Whoever planted that money was waiting to kill whoever went looking for it. Sort of a sadistic sense of humor type of thing. If this is a true story, that is.

The only flaw in writing I saw was the yellow text thing. Before thinking about beached whales and whatnot, one would certainly pay attention to colored letters first because it is so obvious (I know I would have done that right away). I wondered why he did not do that.

I wouldn't guarantee that at all. Most people once they get an idea of how to solve something in their head they tend to ignore all else, hence why it helps to take a break from solving a problem to clear your mind and allow yourself to approach it differently.

Maybe he should have noticed the colored letters but to me it added suspense to the video as I was like "NO, LOOK AT THE LETTERS YOURE MISSING SOMETHING!!!" It shows he was getting desperate in his desire to complete the quest and in his desperation missing something that was obvious, to us at least

In Fortresses' video, he says 'if you skip all the crap, you get to the real clue'.
The last line was underlined, so it would tend to draw the eye more quickly than coloured letters. If I were him, I would've read the underlined section, worked backwards a bit until it made sense, and gone from there.

It would be very easy to miss the colouring of the letters if you immediately jumped to the textual clue as he did.

Also, the letters didn't provide a directional clue, they provided a bit of melodramatic text that was unrelated. It's possible he did discover the hidden message, but as it wasn't the directional clue he was looking for, he disregarded it.

He didn't go looking for a whale, you're skipping what the resolution was that he focused on and that was the misspelling of the word Whale in the last line that was underlined. That's definitely something you could notice first. And messing with the colors does not mean he would have solved them, he could very well have looked at them and not seen the message.

I think it depends on the way the person thinks. My first reaction on seeing that paper was that they spelled "Wale's" like the country Wales. But then I ignored it because the rest of the text was also in old english.

It's a cool fake story, but even without all the other evidence, why would the guy looking for the 9000 pounds be uploading videos of the clues and answers to riddles before he'd found the money? Someone could easily beat him to it. If he was real, he'd have taken the note in the yellow box and not shown it on youtube.

This is kinda true. There was a guy on here a while back who posted the specs to a robot toy he was working on. There are now copies of his toys at RadioShack. Now he doesn't show all the cool things he's working on :-/

I have a question. How does the filmmaker get the clip of Fortress going on a bus-ride to wales, if he died and was never able to upload it to Youtube?

Maybe he uploaded it through a mobile device, but it seems to be done with a hand-held camera; so it seems unlikely that he could submit it to youtube mid-wales trip.

The very fact that this youtube video was uploaded suggests that Fortress made it back safely to London to upload the clip, meaning he was not murdered. Plus, if this video had only 24 views, how did the filmmaker find it himself?

Camera straps are usually on the right hand side. Someone who is consciously trying to keep a camera pointed somewhere would probably use their left hand to do whatever and their right hand to keep it steady.

I think Fortress ended up moving the camera to his left hand while unscrewing the screw for better control. I don't remember, though and cbf looking it up again. Was a good story, though!